"Much of the material unearthed by this book is ugly," states historiographer Patricia Morton who exposes "profoundly dehumanizing constructions of reality embedded in American scholarship" as it has attempted to render the history of the Afro-American woman. Focusing on the scholarly "literature of fact" rather than on fictional or popular portrayals, Disfigured Images explores the telling--and frequent mis-telling--of the story of black women during a century of American historiography beginning in the late nineteenth century and extending to the present. Morton finds that during this period, a large body of scholarly literature was generated that "presented little fact and much fiction" about black women's history. The book's ten chapters take long and lingering looks at the black woman's "prefabricated" past. Contemporary revisionist studies with their goals of discovering and articulating the real nature of the slave woman's experience and role are thoroughly examined in the conclusion. Disfigured Images complements current work by recognizing in its findings a long-needed refutation of a caricatured, mythical version of black women's history. Morton's introduction presents an overview of her subject emphasizing the mythical, ingrained nature of the black woman's image in historiography as a "natural and permanent slave." The succeeding chapters use historical and social science works as primary sources to explore such issues as the foundations of sexism-racism, the writing of W.E.B. DuBois, twentieth century notions of black women, current black and women's studies, new and old images of motherhood, and more. The conclusion investigates how and why recent Americanhistoriographical scholarship has banished the old myths by presenting a more accurate history of black women. This keenly perceptive and original study should find an influential place in both women's studies and black studies programs as well as in American history, American literature, and sociology departments. With its unusually complete panorama of the period covered it would be a unique and valuable addition to courses such as slavery, the American South, women in (North) American history, Afro-American history, race and sex in American literature and discourse, and the sociology of race.

Discovering the Women in Slavery is a collection of fourteen original essays on women's experiences of slavery in America, researched and written from gender- and women-focused perspectives. The essays discuss not only slave women, but also plantation and slaveholding mistresses and free women of color, in contexts ranging from the colonial era to the Civil War South. Intended for wide readership, this book is especially designed to bring attention to the new questions and findings about American slavery that are engendered by today's exploration of the experience and roles of the women generally left invisible, stereotyped, or both, by conventional American slavery history. As Patricia Morton notes in her historiographical introduction, Discovering the Women in Slavery continues the advances made, especially over the last decade, in understanding how women experienced slavery and shaped slavery history. In addition, the collection illuminates some emancipating new perspectives and methodologies. Throughout, the contributors pay close attention--over time and place--to variations, differences, and diversity regarding issues of gender and sex, race and ethnicity, and class. They draw on such qualitative sources as letters, novels, oral histories, court records, and local histories as well as quantitative sources like census data and parish records. The collection is structured in two sections that demonstrate, through complementary approaches, how the diverse and intersecting worlds of women and slavery can be discovered. The first section comprises pioneering individual case studies. One essay, for example, uses racist sources to shed light on a former slave woman's major contribution to the South's internal rebellions against the Confederacy. Another discusses a mistress who, by her own initiative, first became a slave owner while her husband was at war. In the second section, which presents group studies, one finds equally pathbreaking explorations of such topics as the religious experience and culture of early slave women and also the clothing and self-adornment of enslaved and free African American women as material culture artifacts and evidence. All of the essays in the collection point to additional sources for study and research. Reconstructing the histories of women who struggled to shape their own lives and who, in the context of slavery and its legacies, often struggled tragically against each other, this collection richly contributes to the humanization of America's slavery past.

"Much of the material unearthed by this book is ugly," states historiographer Patricia Morton who exposes "profoundly dehumanizing constructions of reality embedded in American scholarship" as it has attempted to render the history of the Afro-American woman. Focusing on the scholarly "literature of fact" rather than on fictional or popular portrayals, Disfigured Images explores the telling--and frequent mis-telling--of the story of black women during a century of American historiography beginning in the late 19th century and extending to the present. Morton finds that during this period, a large body of scholarly literature was generated that "presented little fact and much fiction" about black women's history. The book's 10 chapters take long and lingering looks at the black woman's "prefabricated" past. Contemporary revisionist studies with their goals of discovering and articulating the real nature of the slave woman's experience and role are thoroughly examined in the conclusion. Disfigured Images complements current work by recognizing in its findings a long-needed refutation of a caricatured, mythical version of black women's history. Morton's introduction presents an overview of her subject emphasizing the mythical, ingrained nature of the black woman's image in historiography as a "natural and permanent slave." The succeeding chapters use historical and social science works as primary sources and look at: "The Foundations of Sexism-Racism," "White and Black Stories of Slave Women," the writing of W. E. B. DuBois, 20th century notions of black women, current Black and Women's Studies, "New and Old Images of Motherhood," and more. The conclusion investigates how and why recentAmerican historiographical scholarship has banished the old myths by presenting a more accurate history of black women. This keenly perceptive and original study should find an influential place in both Women's Studies and Black Studies programs as well as in American History, American Literature, and Sociology departments. With its unusually complete panorama of the period covered it would be a unique and valuable addition to courses such as Slavery, The American South, Women in (North) American History, Afro-American History, Race and Sex in American Literature and Discourse, and The Sociology of Race.